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‘Only when I’ve known them longer than two hours,’ he said. His face was quite straight, but amusement threaded his voice and when Amanda looked at him suspiciously one corner of his mouth twitched.
For some reason, she felt a blush stealing up her cheeks. She felt ridiculously ruffled. This was Blair McAllister, she reminded herself with an edge of desperation. All he had done was smile at her—and not even a proper smile at that!—so why was she having trouble breathing properly?
‘I’ll get your suitcase out,’ he was saying with a return to his usual manner. Leaning over the seat, he manoeuvred her case so that it was lying flat on top of the boxes behind her. ‘I suggest you take off those wet things first, and then find something warm and dry to put on instead.’
‘Yes...yes, I’ll do that.’ Amanda pulled herself together with an effort. She must be even more tired than she had thought to let a smile—a suggestion of a smile—discompose her. She leant forward to struggle out of her jacket, but she was so cold that Blair had to help her, and the feel of his hands grazing against her only made her more awkward.
‘That shirt’s sodden too,’ he said when he eventually managed to peel off the jacket and spread it out in the back. ‘Go on, take that off too. There’s no point in being modest if it means you dying of pneumonia, and if you’re worried about me, I have had a very long, trying day, not improved by hanging around at the station for an hour and half or breaking down, and I can assure you that seduction is the last thing on my mind!’
‘The thought never occurred to me,’ said Amanda stiffly through chattering teeth.
Blair sat back in his seat and studied the bedraggled figure beside him. The meagre light was enough to see that the shiny brown hair was plastered to her head and as he watched she sniffed and drearily wiped a trickle of rain from her nose in an unconscious gesture of tiredness. ‘Come on, huny up before you freeze to death,’ he said almost brusquely. ‘It’s not exactly the ideal situation for a spot of lovemaking anyway, is it?’ he went on casually as Amanda began to fumble with the tiny buttons of her shirt. ‘I prefer a little more comfort myself.’
Amanda tried to imagine the dour Blair McAllister making love and found to her discomfort that she could manage it with unnerving clarity. She had known the man for something less than three hours, had seen him clearly for less than three minutes...how was it that she could picture him so vividly, reaching out, leaning over, bending down for a kiss? What made her picture him with a slow smile and slow, sure hands?
Her fingers were still numb with cold, and the distracting image of Blair was making her even clumsier as she struggled awkwardly with the buttons. They were tricky at the best of times and she muttered with a mixture of embarrassment and frustration as her hands slipped again.
‘Here, let me have a go,’ said Blair abruptly, and before Amanda quite realised what was happening he had leant over to undo the top button. He must have been as cold as she was, but his fingers were deft and impersonal, and warm where they brushed against her skin.
Amanda was intensely grateful for the dim light that disguised the wave of colour that swept up her cheeks. Her fingers might be numb with cold, but inside she could feel herself burning with an excruciating awareness of the man so impersonally unbuttoning her shirt with fingers that were just as slow and sure as she had imagined.
‘Seduction is the last thing on my mind,’ he had said, but she couldn’t stop herself wondering what it would be like if it wasn’t. What would it be like if he was thinking about making love now, what if he was thinking about her? What if he were unbuttoning her shirt like a lover and not like a nanny undressing a tiresome child? What would it be like if he slid his hands beneath the silk to caress her skin? Amanda’s heart was thudding slowly, painfully against her ribs and her throat was tight and dry. God, what was the matter with her? She must stop this; she must—
‘I must choose a more comfortable place to undress you next time,’ said Blair. ‘This would be much more fun if we were both warm and dry and weren’t squashed into the front seat of a damp car, wouldn’t it?’ The sound of his voice wrenched her back to reality, but she heard only the undercurrent of laughter in his voice and stared blankly at him.
‘Joke,’ he quoted her own explanation back at her. ‘Just trying to lighten the atmosphere.’
Amanda swallowed and smiled weakly. If only he knew how close he had been to reading her mind! ‘It’s just as well the seats are so wet, then, isn’t it?’ she said feebly as Blair undid the last button and pulled the shirt off her to reveal the dull gleam of the cream silk camisole she wore.
‘Just as well,’ he said after a moment.
There was a long pause, and then he looked up directly into Amanda’s eyes. The light wasn’t good enough to read his expression. It threw a fuzzy glow over one side of his face, blurring the forceful features but paradoxically heightening the impression of granite strength that already seemed so much a part of him. In the darkness he was a massive presence, at once reassuring and disturbing.
Amanda was held, pinned by that unreadable gaze. The rain drumming on the roof and the whooping wind seemed to be coming from a long way away. There was only the darkness and the blurry light on Blair’s cheek and Blair’s jaw and the solid line of Blair’s throat.
She never knew how long they looked at each other. It might only have been a few seconds, but suddenly he was looking away and she realised that she had been holding her breath. She let it out with a tiny gasp and, as if released from a spell, scrambled round in her seat to scrabble through her suitcase. She couldn’t distinguish any colours but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was to put on as many layers as possible to act as barriers between her and Blair McAllister’s unsettling gaze.
Her fingers closed on the cashmere jumper that her mother had given her last Christmas and she tugged it out, grateful for its soft warmth. After several false starts, she discovered a shirt and dragged it on before wriggling out of her wet skirt and tights and wriggling into some leggings and two pairs of socks to warm her frozen feet. Heaven only knew what colours she had on or whether any of it matched, but Amanda, studiously avoiding Blair’s eyes, cared only that she was covered.
‘Have you got a towel in there?’ Blair asked when she had finished.
‘I think so... somewhere.’ Kneeling on the seat, she groped through her suitcase until she found it. ‘Here.’
Blair took it and, ordering Amanda to bend her head, towelled her hair vigorously until she protested. She emerged complaining bitterly and with her hair standing up in all directions, but had to admit that she felt better. Grumbling about Blair’s rough treatment had dispersed her awkwardness too, and it was possible now to see that her earlier bizare reaction to him had merely been the result of cold and exhaustion.
‘Better?’ he asked as he rubbed the towel over his own hair.
‘Well, drier,’ she admitted cautiously. ‘All I need now is a hot meal, a stiff drink and a warm bed and I’d be really quite comfortable.’
‘I can’t do much about the hot meal or the warm bed,’ said Blair, reaching in the back for a carrier bag, which he extracted at last with a grunt of satisfaction. ‘But I can provide a drink.’ He produced a bottle from the bag as he eased himself back into his seat. ‘Do you like whisky?’
‘Haven’t you got anything else?’ said Amanda, who had been hoping that he might magically produce a bottle of red and a corkscrew. She might have known that he would be a whisky man.
‘No,’ he said, and unscrewed the top. ‘Have some of this anyway. It’ll warm you up.’
‘Oh, all right.’ He passed her the bottle and Amanda reached for it without enthusiasm. Her fingers fumbled against his and she couldn’t prevent a tiny frisson shivering down her spine. ‘Sorry,’ she said awkwardly.
‘Have you got a good grip of it before I let go?’ asked Blair. ‘I don’t want a good bottle of malt going the same way as the torch!’
The astringency in his voice helped Amanda to ignore the strumming sensation where their hands had touched. ‘I wouldn’t dream of dropping anything quite so close to your heart,’ she said with a frosty look. Taking a defiantly large swig, she promptly choked and spluttered as the whisky burned down her throat.
‘That’s better, isn’t it?’ said Blair as she shook her head to clear it and hastily handed back the bottle.
‘It’s certainly... warming,’ gasped Amanda hoarsely.
‘Warming? Is that all you can say? That’s Macallan single malt you were chucking back!’
‘Is that good?’
‘The best.’
‘Oh. dear, I hope you weren’t saving it for a special occasion.’
Blair drank reflectively from the bottle. ‘A whisky like this makes any occasion special,’ he said.
‘What, even stranded in the middle of a storm with a hysterical nanny?’ Amanda asked ironically, and he turned in his seat to look at her. Her hair stuck out in every direction where he had rubbed it dry, but her eyelashes were still spiky with rain. Without the suit and the sleek hairstyle she looked a lot less than her twenty-four years, and almost unrecognisable as the smart young woman who had got off the train at Fort William. Blair’s eyes rested on her face, still somehow vivid in the dim light, and the chin which was tilted at a characteristically challenging angle.
‘Even that,’ he said slowly, faint amusement bracketing his mouth.
What was it about that damned elusive smile of his that made the blood tingle beneath her skin? Amanda turned away to rest her cheek against the window and let the cool glass drain the heat from her face. ‘I’m glad you’re finding it special,’ she muttered. ‘I can think of other ways to describe being stuck out in the middle of nowhere, trapped in a wet car by slavering monsters and only a bottle of whisky for comfort!’
‘Come on, stop complaining,’ said Blair without heat. ‘Things could be worse.’
‘How?’
‘You could be outside with your monsters, for a start. You ought to be grateful that we’ve the car for shelter. At least you’ll be able to sleep.’
‘Sleep? Sleep?’ Amanda’s voice rose to an outraged squeak as exhaustion caught up with her. ‘How can I possibly sleep when I’m tired and I’m cold and I’m hungry and I wish I’d never come near bloody Scotland in the first place?’
Blair was unmoved by her outburst. ‘Have another drink,’ was all he said, and he handed her the bottle. Amanda was ready for the fiery impact of the whisky this time and took a more cautious slug. ‘I’ve even got some biscuits,’ he added, producing a packet out of the bag by his feet. ‘So that will cross hunger off your list of miseries.’ He npped open the packet and passed it over to Amanda.
‘A ginger-nut wasn’t quite what I had in mind,’ she sighed, taking three anyway. She bit into one glumly. ‘I was thinking of something warm and tasty, preferably smothered in cheese, accompanied by a bottle of wine and followed by a nice, fattening pudding. Sticky toffee pudding,’ she decided after a moment’s thought. Munching on the biscuit, she lapsed into silence and stared disconsolately out at the rain which was still being hurled out of the darkness by a frustrated gale.
Blair regarded her with a sort of exasperated amusement for a moment and then reached up to click off the overhead light. ‘We may as well save the battery until we need it,’ he said as the darkness blotted out everything. Amanda couldn’t even see her ginger-nut.
‘You’re not a very typical nanny, are you?’ His voice came out of the blackness, deep and strong and infinitely reassuring.
‘What do you mean?’ said Amanda cautiously.
‘I always imagine nannies to be calm, practical people, used to coping when things go wrong.’
‘I’m coping!’ she ruffled up instantly.
‘Not without making a fuss,’ Blair pointed out astringently. ‘What would you be like if this was a crisis?’
‘What do you mean, if? This is a crisis!’
‘You’ve just proved my point for me,’ he said, sounding resigned. ‘You’ve got to spend a few uncomfortable hours in the car. It’s perfectly safe, you’ve got dry clothes, something to drink, something to eat and me to look after you in the unlikely event that anything did happen, but, for you, that’s a crisis! What would you do if something really bad happened to you?’
‘Right at this moment, I can’t think of anything worse than being stuck here with you,’ said Amanda sourly, and deliberately drank some more of his precious whisky.
Blair ignored that. ‘I just hope that you’re a little less...extravagant when it comes to dealing with children,’ he said disapprovingly. ‘Judging by what the agency told me, I can only assume that you undergo some sort of personality change when actually faced with a child!’
In the darkness, Amanda put up her chin defiantly. ‘Well, we’ll see, won’t we?’
‘Yes,’ said Blair. He was no more than a black blur against more blackness but Amanda could feel that uncomfortably acute gaze resting on her. She just hoped he couldn’t see in the dark, or her expression would surely give her away! ‘We’ll see.’
CHAPTER THREE
AMANDA’S head was aching. Opening one eye very cautiously, she found herself looking at something dark and curved only inches away from her face. She stared at it for a long time before her pounding brain registered that she was looking at the bottom of a steering wheel.
It hurt too much to think about what it was doing there. Amanda closed her eye again, but the effort of recognising a steering wheel had set her mind working, albeit slowly, and as she lay and willed herself to sink back into comfortable oblivion memories of the night before came filtering back in a series of odd, unconnected pictures: huddling under the bonnet in the sluicing rain, spluttering as the whisky burned down her throat, sitting very still as Blair undid the buttons of her shirt and being passionately glad of the darkness.
Blair... Until then, Amanda had been remembering in the peculiarly detached way of the half-asleep, but his image dissolved the last wisps of dream and brought her awake with a jolt. At the same moment, she became aware that fingers were twisting strands of her hair absently together and her eyes snapped open with the sudden realisation that she was sprawled across the front of the car with her head in Blair McAllister’s lap. His other hand was resting lightly at the curve of her hip, and his thighs were broad and firm and relaxed beneath her cheek.
‘At last!’ Blair must have felt her involuntary stiffening. ‘I thought you were going to sleep all morning.’
‘I didn’t realise...’ Horribly embarrassed, Amanda struggled upright, wincing at the stiffness of her limbs. Someone—presumably Blair—had stuffed a couple of jumpers from her suitcase around the handbrake, but it hadn’t stopped it digging into her. ‘Y-you should have woken me,’ she stammered.
‘I didn’t have the heart,’ said Blair. ‘You were sleeping like a baby.’
She blinked at him, disconcerted to find him at once a stranger and oddly familiar. For the first time she registered that it was light. The darkness of the night before had blurred the strength of his features and now, in the brightness of morning, it was as if she had never seen his face before.
It was his eyes she noticed first of all. They were an opaque blue-grey, the colour of slate, and beneath dark, sarcasticlooking eyebrows they held an unnervingly acute expression that gave focus to his face. For Amanda, it was as if the morning light had thrown everything about him into sharp relief: the angle of his jaw, the thick, dark hair, the prickle of stubble on his unshaven skin and, most of all, the way his mouth was set in a line that was already uncannily unfamiliar.
Aware that she was staring, and afflicted by sudden shyness, Amanda looked away. ‘I don’t feel as if I slept a wink,’ she said uncomfortably.
‘You slept more than a wink,’ said Blair. ‘You drank half my whisky, keeled over into my lap in the middle of a sentence and proceeded to snore for the rest of the night.’
Amanda looked appalled. ‘I didn’t, did I?’ She did vaguely remember drinking whisky out of a bottle, but she had no recollection of falling asleep at all. She looked suspiciously at Blair. ‘Anyway, I don’t snore.’
‘It sounded remarkably like snoring to me.’ His voice was sardonic, not unamused. ‘I’ve been listening to you ever since the wind dropped, so I should know. Still, I suppose I should be glad that one of us at least had a comfortable night.’
‘If someone asked me to describe my first night in Scotland, comfortable wouldn’t be the first word that sprang to mind,’ said Amanda sourly, grimacing as she stretched her stiff limbs. ‘I feel terrible.’
‘I’m not surprised, judging by the amount of my whisky you sank last night. I thought you weren’t supposed to like the stuff?’
Amanda held her aching head. ‘I don’t’ With her other hand, she twisted round the rear-view mirror and peered blearily into it. Her hair had lost its customary bounce and shine in last night’s rain and, although now dry, it stood up at impossible angles around her face, one side of which was marked with narrow red lines where her cheek had been pressed into Blair’s cords. Mascara was smudged beneath her gritty eyes and she moaned as she rubbed it away with a knuckle. ‘Ugh!’ was all she felt capable of groaning, and, unable to bear the sight of herself any longer, she turned the mirror away.
‘I must say that you don’t look quite as smart as you did when you got off the train last night.’ Blair pretended to look Amanda over critically, but she could tell that he was enjoying himself. He didn’t actually smile, but amusement lurked around his mouth and the crinkles at the corners of his eyes deepened. Involuntarily, she followed his gaze from the scarlet cashmere jumper, which she had managed to put on back to front, to the hideously clashing leggings and on down to the assortment of odd socks which she had pulled on last night in her haste to cover herself.
Some executive she looked now! Mortified, Amanda hurriedly pulled off her jumper and put it back on the right way round, making sure this time that both sides of her shirt collar lay neatly over the round neck. The small detail made her feel better and she patted the collar down, only to flush as she caught Blair’s mocking slate eyes.
‘What time is it?’ she asked crossly.
He glanced at his watch and told her.
Amanda shuddered. ‘I knew I wouldn’t like it,’ she grumbled, rubbing a hand round her aching neck.
‘Your previous charges must have been very well behaved if you’re not used to getting up at this sort of time,’ said Blair, callously indifferent to her suffering. He reached down to release the bonnet and opened his door. ‘Not that I’d call this particularly early. It would count as a lie-in on an expedition.’
‘Remind me never to join one of your expeditions,’ muttered Amanda, watching him morosely as he jumped out and went round to inspect the engine. Still grumbling to herself, she opened her own door and eased herself out to stand in the road in her mismatched socks and stretch painfully. Only then did she look round her and her jaw dropped.
They had spluttered to a halt on a long, straight stretch of road that swept down the hillside to the shores of a loch which was as smooth and still as dark glass below them. The fury of last night’s storm might never have been. Not a breath of wind stirred the surface of the water, and it reflected back the massive snow-capped peaks looming around it, sharply outlined against a clear, crisp sky. Amanda, whose image of Scotland until now had been of brown hills shrouded in grey mist, could only stare at the scene spread out before her like a vast postcard. The hills were a warm golden colour, separated from the blue of the sky by their crowns of white snow, and the crystalline light made her blink.
‘Oh,’ she said.
Blair glanced up from the engine. ‘It’s quite a view to wake up to, isn’t it?’
‘Ye-es.’ She looked slowly around her once more, her breath freezing in a white cloud. She didn’t think that she had ever seen anywhere as empty as this before. The thin ribbon of road stretching out into the distance was the only sign of civilisation; other than that, there were only hills and sky and water and cold, clear air. There was something overwhelming about the austere grandeur of the scene that made Amanda feel very small. The massive, uncompromising mountains reminded her of Blair, she decided, trying to shrug off the feeling. ‘It’s all a bit bleak, isn’t it?’
He looked disapproving at her lack of enthusiasm. ‘It’s magnificent country. You’re very lucky to see it like this.’
But Amanda was in no mood to admire the scenery. After the first shock of surprise, she had lapsed back into early-morning disgruntlement. ‘I feel a lot of things right now,’ she sighed, ‘but lucky is not one of them.’
She was dying to go to the loo, but trees or bushes seemed to be in short supply up here. For miles there seemed to be nothing but tussocky grass interspersed with clumps of heather, dead, battered bracken and the odd patch of unmelted snow. Peeling off her ridiculous socks, Amanda rummaged in her case for a pair of trainers. She was tempted to change all her clothes, but it didn’t seem worth it before she had a bath, and anyway, she was damned if she was going to undress in front of Blair McAllister in broad daylight. It had been awkward enough in the dark!
There was a granite outcrop in the heather further up the hill. Deciding that it offered the best privacy she was going to get, Amanda began to clamber up the steep bank that ran along the roadside.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ asked Blair, straightening from the engine.
She pointed at the outcrop. ‘Just up there.’
‘What on earth for?’
‘Why do you think?’ she said testily.
He sighed. ‘Why don’t you just go behind the car? I won’t look.’
‘Someone else might,’ she pointed out, grabbing onto a clump of heather so that she could haul herself up onto the top of the bank at last.
‘Who?’ he demanded impatiently. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s not exactly a constant stream of traffic along this road.’
‘A car might come round the corner any minute.’
‘Amanda, the nearest corner is a good five miles away! You’d have plenty of time to gather yourself together if you’re that inhibited.’
‘I am not inhibited!’ she snapped, irritated by his attitude. ‘I simply prefer a little privacy, and if I want to hide behind a rock I will.’ Turning her back on him, she attempted to stalk off, but it was hard to stalk with dignity through knee-high tussocks of grass and heather, and she ended up ploughing inelegantly through it. It wasn’t long before she was regretting her determined stand. The outcrop which had looked so close from the road seemed to keep receding up the hill, and by the time she had struggled up to it she was exhausted.
